Took just a few days

The second week of June 2016, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched NROL-37, carrying its latest spy satellite into geosynchronous orbit via Delta IV-Heavy rocket.

But it only took amateur space enthusiasts a few days to locate the mysterious new craft in the skies near Malaysia, over the Strait of Malacca.

While the contents and capabilities of the NROL-37 mission’s payload are classified — the satellite is innocuously labeled US-268 — its need to hitch a ride on the world’s biggest rocket strongly suggests it is the seventh member of the Mentor/Orion family, an extra-large class of signals intelligence satellites that helps provide eavesdropping capability to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Their large size also makes Mentor satellites the easiest to find and photograph. In a blog post, Dr. Marco Langbroek detailed how he and two other amateur skygazers found the Mentor-7 satellite near 104 E longitude over the course of a few days using standard photographic equipment.

You can always spot a geosynchronous satellite by taking long exposures of the sky at night and noting which “stars” aren’t moving.

In their observations, the satellite-tracking crew found that the spacecraft seems to be drifting west to its fixed geosynchronous position. Lanbroek speculates it will eventually stop near somewhere over Central Africa or Sri Lanka.

“The reason for the initial placement near 104 E is likely that in this position it is initially well placed for the Pine Gap Joint Defense Facility ground station in central Australia — one of two facilities dedicated to NRO SIGINT payloads — during the initial check-out phase,” Langbroek wrote.